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Tag: Matt SmithAs has been its way this year, the BBC has released a little prequel scene for the upcoming return of Doctor Who. Its a cracking scene, that doesn’t spoil anything, but does start to get me excited for the show coming back (not that it takes much).
Best part is the Doctor’s answering machine message 
This year’s Doctor Who Christmas Special carried with it all the excitement that the rest of series 5 enjoyed. With audiences now having seen Steven Moffat’s vision of the show, and Matt Smith’s Doctor, the question became, just what would a Christmas Special made by this new team be like?
And it was, unsurprisingly, rather excellent. But also very different to what has come before. With previous Christmas Specials all being set, at least to some degree, on Earth, this was the first one set exclusively on an alien planet, and yet in many ways it was the most human, focusing on the character of Kazran Sardick, the “Scrooge” of the piece, and magnificently played by Michael Gambon.
With Amy and Rory’s honeymoon disrupted when the spaceship they’re on starts crashing towards an unknown planet, the ship gets caught up in the planet’s unusual atmosphere, which is controlled by Sardick, and so the Doctor must convince him to mend his ways and help the trapped passengers.
And how the Doctor goes about this is typically Steven Moffat, with the Doctor travelling back into Kazran’s past to change the events that led to him becoming the bitter old man he is. Time travel plays a key role in this story, with the Doctor whizzing back and forward in time between young and old versions of Kazran, altering his life. This culminates in them freeing Abigail Pettigrew (in a fine acting debut by Katherine Jenkins), who is kept frozen by the Sardicks as collateral on a loan, along with countless others, who then joins Kazran and the Doctor on their many Christmas Eve adventures.
Throughout all this, the whole concept is fantastically sold by Michael Gambon. We often return to him while all this is going on, and so its up to Gambon to play a man who’s life is altering by the minute (as the Doctor’s changes catch up to the present day). Its a great performance, with a wonderful twist when all the Doctor’s meddling backfires and ends with Kazran roughly the same as when he started.
The design of the world was also a fantastic part of the episode. To capture the Dickensian feel of the story, we’re presented with a wonderful, Steampunk alien world, blending that Victorian feel with technology. And the idea of the fish swimming through the air was simple, but created some brilliant weird and alien visuals.
Possibly the only shame of this story was that its the first Christmas Special that’s not seen a change in the TARDIS crew, and yet Amy and Rory are barely in it. However the story of the Doctor and Kazran is so compellingly played by Gambon and Matt Smith that its understandable, and I found myself so immersed in that story that I didn’t really miss them.
And of course the script isn’t just clever (the reveal of the Ghost of Christmas Yet-to-Come is a powerful moment), but also has those great quotable lines that Moffat is so good at writing and Matt is brilliant at delivering. From the Doctor’s first arrival down the chimney, to the psychic paper finally shorting out or to the Doctor marrying Marilyn Munroe there’s a lot of great lines and laughs.
The only real worry I had about the episode, also relates to how much I loved it. But I’m an adult fan, and thinking about the episode afterwards, I could see how its story of one man finding the joy and love in life could maybe lose some of its younger viewers. I hope that’s not the case though.
With its Dickensian tone, steampunk setting and Katherine Jenkins’ frozen beauty, this Christmas Special really embodied the fairy-tale aspect that Steven Moffat brought to the show last year. Much like the success they enjoyed with his series opener and finale, the new team have now also proven that they can bring something special to the Christmas episode.
Looks great to me. A few random thoughts:
Stetsons are cool. Nice repeat of the fez gag 
No clips of Mark Sheppard, awwww 
Matt Smith with a beard? A first for the Doctor?
But most interesting for me:
The return of the mysterious not-TARDIS from last year. VERY pleased to see that plot thread wasn’t forgotten about as many (including me) had feared.
Recently I was made part of the staff on Doctor Who fansite, Outpost Skaro. As a result, one of the things I’ll be doing on the site is posting up reviews from time-to-time of various Doctor Who and sci-fi bits and pieces (so largely what I do here, but with probably less Green Lantern).
So in the spirit of shameless self-promotion, and for any of my readers who care, I’ll make sure I post links up here to any Skaro reviews I do.
First up is the latest installment in the Doctor Who Adventure Games series: TARDIS, now available for free from the BBC website.
This year was always going to be a big deal for Doctor Who. RTD had been show runner since it came back, and David Tennant was an amazingly successful Doctor. So the prospect of a new series, with a new show runner, a new vision and a new Doctor was a daunting one. Would audiences accept the change? And how noticeable would Steven Moffat’s vision be in the final product versus RTD’s?
Up until this year, I would probably say series 4 was my favourite. David Tennant had playing the 10th Doctor down to a fine art, and in Donna there was a companion who I found a much better match for Tennant’s Doctor than either Rose or Martha. The episodes by and large I found consistently good and the return of Davros, the icing on the cake.
So Steven Moffat certainly had a lot to live up to. And straight from the Eleventh Hour, the new series hit the ground running, with possibly the best series opener yet.
For me, the real stand-out thing of the whole series was undoubtedly Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor. The youngest actor in the role, and pretty much an unknown (not that David Tennant was really a household name prior to getting the role) there had been a fair amount of worry in fandom about how he would be in the role. But it quickly became obvious why Steven Moffat had had so much confidence in him. The initial scenes with Amelia won me over quickly, and over the course of the series he continued to impress, pitching his Doctor as much more of a mad professor than his predecessor, this portrayal really struck a chord with me, aided no doubt by the great quotable lines Steven Moffat kept feeding him, and his brilliant delivery of them. “Its a fez, I wear a fez now. Fez’s are cool.”
This series also showed a willingness to experiment a little, obviously a sign of the new production team finding their feet. The arc plot was greatly expanded in comparison to previous years, with the scene in Flesh and Stone that was later revisited in the finale, and the cracks appearing throughout the show. The overarching threat of the Silence was left unresolved, and instead set things up for next year. However we also had the Van Gogh episode. An episode that could’ve so easily been a pure historical, focused solely on Van Gogh and his mental issues. These were brave moves, and for me paid off. Whether the more general audience bought into it I don’t know, but at least with the overarching plot, they’re promised a resolution next year, so don’t have too long to wait.
In Amy and Rory, again Steven Moffat took what RTD had done previously and built on it. In some ways you can easily draw parallels to Rose and Mickey in the Christopher Eccleston series, but here things play out very differently. Rose was obviously not as attached to Mickey as Amy is to Rory, and where the former couple ended up separating over Rose’s travels with the Doctor, here the Doctor gets actively involved in trying to help the couple, bringing Rory onboard the TARDIS and taking them away for a romantic getaway (how was he supposed to know there’d be evil fish-vampires there?). This provided the middle of the series with a nice boost, and gave Amy a strong character arc for the series as she realises how much she loves Rory, only to lose him again in Cold Blood. All this means that when he comes back in an Auton body, only to near-fatally wound Amy and then spend 2000 years guarding her in the Pandorica, its all the more powerful, and it all culminates nicely in their wedding.
Not just the actors and writers changed this year though, with various pieces of design getting make overs as well. The new TARDIS console room went down very well with me. I’m not a huge fan of the actual console itself (I’ve never been a massive fan of the bric-a-brac look), especially the central column which I think looks too cluttered making it hard to make out features like the blown-glass sculpture at the centre. However the room is brilliant. I love the multi-level aspect that’s been increased from the previous version, and it was really nice to see a return of the big viewscreen that was completely absent in the Eccleston/Tennant console. The fact there’s various corridors and doors heading off really leads me to hope that at somepoint we’re going to finally explore more of the TARDIS in the new series.
The one makeover though that didn’t work for me, was the new Daleks. They’ve been discussed to death in most places, but suffice to say, I greatly preferred the RTD versions. I do though like the idea of the specific Daleks in certain roles marked out by their colour, and what role the Eternal will come to play should be interesting (my assumption is that it’ll end up like the Cult of Skaro, working separately from the others on its own projects to ensure the Dalek race continues and thrives).
Overall, this series has definitely been a big success for me. I’m actually slightly surprised at just how much Matt Smith has won me over so quickly. If I were doing a “best Doctors” list, he’d almost certainly be near the top. Steven Moffat’s ambitious scripting paid off massively for me, and the high points of the series (The Eleventh Hour, Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone and The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang) probably, for me, were even higher than those set by previous series.
I find myself eagerly awaiting the Christmas Special and series 6, but in the meantime we’ve got Matt Smith’s appearance in Sarah Jane Adventures to look forward to. Sure to be interesting as Sarah and Jo meet the new Doctor, but also as we have Russell T Davies scripting the Eleventh Doctor for the first time, something I’m very much looking forward to.
So, last we saw, Rory was an Auton, Amy had been shot (by Rory), The Doctor had been locked in the Pandorica by pretty much every alien ever and River was trapped in the TARDIS as it exploded, destroying pretty much everything. The big question being, how the heck do they get out of this one?
Steven Moffat had certainly held true to RTD’s template for the first part of his finale. All of reality at stake and lots of returning faces and everything screaming EPIC! However for his finale, things suddenly get scaled back to become much more intimate as the focus is brought squarely on the TARDIS crew (and River) as they try to restore the universe and the TARDIS.
The opening was particularly effective, re-using the opening from Eleventh Hour, but with the twist that this is now the universe as seen at the end of The Pandorica Opens, where all other worlds have been wiped out, and the Doctor never crash lands in the back garden. Given how popular the Amelia/Doctor scenes were in the series opener, it was great to see her back, and the reveal of Amy being the one in the Pandorica was really nicely done.
Steven Moffat indulges his love of time travel here to great effect. With the Doctor popping in and out throughout the story to help arrange his own escape, Amy’s resurrection via Amelia and the Pandorica and finally the resetting of the universe, all via the vortex manipulator seen last episode. Its played with great fun, as the strangeness of the Doctor suddenly appearing in a fez and with a mop (fez’s are cool) sits wonderfully with Matt Smith’s take on the character.
As the Doctor takes a hit from a partially-restored Dalek, the story shifts to the Doctor, badly injured and having realised the only way to restore the universe is to use the Pandorica and risk trapping himself in the void on the other side of the cracks. These scenes are where Steven Moffat brings back some of the emotion people have claimed has been missing from his run, as the Doctor, living his life in reverse, carefully figures out the way he can be restored, finding Amelia waiting for him in her garden, tucking her into bed, and telling his story of the old, yet new, borrowed box in the most brilliant blue.
It all built up to a brilliant “punch the air” moment, as the wedding day arrives and the Doctor’s story triggers Amy’s memories of him, allowing her imaginary friend to reappear slap, bang in the middle of the meal. The Doctor emerging already dressed in his top hat and tails for the wedding was great, and it all built wonderfully towards giving us the great final moments of the Doctor, Amy and Rory all together in the TARDIS, heading off towards the Orient Express and the Christmas Special. The fact the old, new, borrowed, blue had been so expertly woven into the Doctor’s story worked beautifully, allowing the viewer to suddenly twig what the Doctor (and Steven Moffat) had done just as Amy’s figuring out herself.
I don’t think we’ve had an ending that upbeat since the series came back, as they’ve always had to deal with a main cast member leaving (9th Doctor, Rose, Martha and Donna), so it made a welcome change in pace, and allowed Steven Moffat to end the series in such a brilliantly happy way that RTD was always denied. But then, in fairness, RTD was exceptionally good at those emotional wringer endings, so this isn’t really a complaint, just a very nice change of pace.
Despite that however, I’m very tempted to say this was the strongest series finale we’ve had. Both parts held up as great episodes on their own, and Steven Moffat expertly weaved in finale aspects people were used to, while also allowing it to draw in things that had been setup throughout the series.
And there’s setup in place for next year as well. The Silence and whoever orchestrated everything by controlling the TARDIS remain to be revealed. Likewise, we’re teased that we’ll be finding out River Song’s story soon too. I like the fact neither of these reveals have been rushed, but I’m also glad its being indicated they will be revealed next year. I like the setup going across series, but this isn’t, and should never be Lost, so I’m glad we’ve got lots of good stuff to look forward to next year with the promise that it’ll actually be resolved.
Christmas can’t come soon enough
After last week’s fairly heavy piece, this week brought us a lighter-hearted episode, as the Doctor finds himself stuck on Earth, living as a lodger in a house where the upstairs has something in it that causes people to vanish, and blocks the TARDIS from landing.
This was a really enjoyable episode. Played mainly for laughs, Smith’s Doctor is the most alien he’s been. Completely out of his depth having to live life as a human there’s a lot of broad laughs from the Doctor’s inability to fit in. Despite the story’s origins as a Doctor Who Magazine comic strip, its still hard to imagine this story working with the 10th Doctor, who seemed so much more human by comparison.
In fact, in some ways, the idea that this is the same Doctor who had Christmas dinner with the Tylers, and spent years exiled to Earth perhaps jars with the humour, but then it is pretty consistent for Smith’s Doctor, remembering his reaction to Amy’s pregnancy a few weeks ago. Whereas the nineth to tenth Doctors saw a shift from a Doctor who barely tolerated other humans most of the time and loathed social interaction to one much more comfortable with it, the Doctor’s personality has now veered even further off in the other direction and he’s genuinely puzzled by it.
That being said, he’s not as entirely out of his depth as he looks. He twigs to the feelings Craig and Sophie have for each other pretty quickly, and he’s certainly a dab hand at football (playing nicely to Matt Smith’s previous career). I have to wonder how much of his dizziness is an act for other’s benefits. Perhaps its not so much that this incarnation is worse at these interactions, perhaps he just finds playing up his alien-ness amusing?
James Corden is someone who’s on TV a lot these days, although I must admit I’ve only seen him in a few things. Gavin and Stacey pretty much completely passed me by and I only caught the first episode of the much-maligned Horne and Corden sketch show. Here though he was very much the straight man to the Doctor’s antics and I thought he came out of it brilliantly. Corden’s relied very much on his comedic roles lately, so to see him playing a role straight was nice and underlined that he’s actually a good actor.
If I had one complaint though, it was mainly that I felt the script was much too heavy handed with the romance being Corden’s character of Craig and his friend Sophie. As the episode went on, I started to find myself getting pulled out of it during these scenes, thinking to myself “Yes! We get it! They both fancy each other but are too scared to make the first move”. That was probably the only bum note I really had with the story though.
The central threat to the episode was well done too. The changing image of the figure beckoning people upstairs was creepy, and the reveal of the threat as an alien attempt at a TARDIS was fascinating. Its perhaps a shame that it was so throwaway though. This is the first time we’ve seen such a craft in the new series outside of the TARDIS, and even in the classic stories, the only race that came close to making a TARDIS were the Daleks (waaaay back in The Chase). The fact a race has created something so very close, using the perception filter as a makeshift chameleon circuit, and even borrowing the central console design strikes me as worth a story in itself, rather than just a throwaway menace.
That being said, the alien TARDIS was a really nice piece of design. And I loved how it echoed the McGann console room (my favourite) with the pillars that curved in towards the console.
The lightweight nature of the story probably means that it won’t be one of the standouts of the series. Highlights like the Eleventh Hour, Time of Angels and last week’s Vincent and the Doctor perhaps draw attention away from this episode, but it was none-the-less a really enjoyable, fun story. No doubt to give us a slight respite before we plough straight into the first part of the finale on Saturday, which if the teaser is anything to go by, looks very, very epic.
Out of all the episodes in the series, this is probably the episode that had garnered a lot of the publicity prior to the actual series starting. And that’s because of its high-profile writer, Richard Curtis.
The second “celebrity historical” of the year, finds the Doctor and Amy discovering a monster in one of Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings, leading them back to visit him and find out what happened.
What follows is a particularly powerful story revolving, not around the mystery of the monster in the painting, but instead around the character of Vincent Van Gogh. Here’s someone regarded as one of the best painters who ever lived, but in his own time, he’s a joke, thought mad by all that live around him, unable to generate even the slightest amount of interest in his work and his vision, and ultimately battling with the depression that this causes.
And its his unique vision which becomes the central conceit of the story. He sees the world in such a singular way that he is aware of the things other people miss. This is presented fairly literally (he can see the otherwise invisible monster) but also just as an eye for the details others overlook, such as when he sees the pain Amy is in, even though she herself has no memory of the loss of Rory (and there’s the wonderful look of remorse on the Doctor’s face when Vincent mentions this, a nice touch by Matt Smith).
The monster itself basically becomes an excuse for the focus on Van Gogh’s character and his struggles, although there is the nice twist that the monster itself was blind, another nod to Van Gogh’s vision being a focus of the story.
All this culminates in the great scene where the Doctor and Amy take Van Gogh back with them to 2010 to let him see his work being exhibited, and see how his art is loved and appreciated (with a great guest turn by Bill Nighy). It was a surprising part of the episode for me, as I don’t think we’ve ever really see the Doctor do this before. As Van Gogh starts to break down its hugely powerful, and then only underscored when they return and, despite Amy’s hopes that they turned things around for him, she discovers Van Gogh still committed suicide a few months later. From the expression on the Doctor’s face, I have to assume he knew this would be the outcome all along, hence his willingness to give Van Gogh the little glimpse of the future.
This episode definitely stands out in the series so far for being a bit different to what we’ve had up until now. With the monster taking such a major backseat to the guest star, it gave us a strong look into who Van Gogh was, I think this was possibly the strongest “celebrity historical” appearance to date, and it certainly gave us more insight into the man than, say, Churchill a few weeks before.
A great episode, and one that I think really stands out as a high point in the series. The specific character-focused plot I think works particularly well as it provided a shift in tone from most other episodes, and there’s that magical moment where all the characters are staring at the night sky, and see it resolve into how Van Gogh sees it.
Returning monsters seem to be a bit of a theme in this series of Doctor Who, with the Daleks and Weeping Angels having already made appearances, and the Cybermen having been trailed for the series finale. However for this two-parter it was the return of a villain not seen since the 80s, in the form of the Silurians.
The Silurians have long been one of my favourite groups of Doctor Who monsters, and their return had been rumoured for a while. The concept of a monster that’s not actually an “alien”, that previously was the dominant life form on Earth and wants it back is a strong one. And with the advent of the Sea Devils, the idea of different types of Silurian was introduced, making them easy to be re-invented for the modern series.
This two-parter was interesting in how much it felt like a love letter to the Pertwee era. The drilling project evoked memories of Inferno, and nicely used that same idea as a way to explain this group of Silurians waking up. Part 1 also felt a lot like build up, with the Doctor’s net of cameras providing a great “A-Team moment”, but ultimately proved to be so much padding when it was immediately rendered useless. A bit more successful in that regard was part 2, which provided the payoff for much of the setup, but then this is a common thing in 2-parters (most recently, The End of Time is a great example of a part 1 that was probably lacking when taken on its own, but part 2 brings everything together).
For the Silurians themselves, I found them incredibly well realised. While I was initially disappointed that they looked more human than previous incarnations, their characterisation was spot on, and the lack of a full-head mask (as previous Silurians and Sea Devils had) certainly allowed the actors to shine more. Indeed some of the emotion of the second part would’ve probably been lost if the actors’ faces had been buried under a tonne of latex. The idea of the battle mask though I thought was a nice compromise in this regard.
A staple of the Silurian stories, the morality, was also present. Be it the Doctor’s rage at the Brigadier blowing up the Silurian base, or Davison’s “There should’ve been another way”, the Silurians and humans meeting never ends well, and the same is true here, as the desperate mother is goaded into killing Alaya on the surface, while Alaya’s sister Restac is desperate to wipe out humanity even before she finds out about her sister’s death. Neither side is in the right here, with the Doctor stuck in the middle, and that’s something that rung very true for a Silurian story. Unlike previous stories though, this tries to end on a more hopeful note, with the Silurians due to reawaken in 1000 years to try again with the hope that both sides will be more ready to live together.
Outside of the main Silurian plot though, we find the main arc of the series moving on as well. The crack’s sudden appearance initially felt quite forced (although it does seem consistent that the crack only turns up after the Doctor and Amy have been in a certain place for a period of time – save the initial crack in Eleventh Hour) but it became vital to what happened next, as Rory was killed by Restac and then absorbed by the crack, wiping him from history. It all felt incredibly quick and brutal, as the characters were also running from the gas, and the follow up scene with the Doctor forcing Amy to remember him was powerfully acted by both of them.
That said, I don’t think we’ve seen the end of Rory. The idea that time can be rewritten is integral to the crack, so I suspect he’ll be seen again at the end of the series. That the Doctor’s pulled what appears to be a piece of the TARDIS from the crack could point to things being changed. Does that mean the TARDIS got destroyed? I can’t see that happening in the finale. So either that gets changed, or the piece of the TARDIS is a red herring (or the outer shell is damaged but is restored). My money would be on the cause of the crack (TARDIS destruction) being changed though, which could have interesting side effects on the rest of this series (its been suggested before that we’ll revisit key points in the series in the finale causing us to see events in a new light). Time changing is a big part of what’s going on here and I can’t wait to see how it all plays out.
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